Herald Sun
The Herald Sun is a
conservative tabloid newspaper in
Melbourne,
Australia, published by
The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd, a subsidiary of
Rupert Murdoch's
News Corporation.
The Herald Sun was formed in
1990 from a
merger of the morning
tabloid paper
The Sun News-Pictorial with its afternoon
broadsheet sister paper
The Herald. It was first published on
October 8,
1990 as
The Herald-Sun. The hyphen in its title was later dropped; the last hyphenated masthead appeared on
May 1 1993.
The Herald Sun is the most popular newspaper in Australia, and with a weekday circulation of 551,100 (and readership of 1,500,000) it even outsells its Sydney counterpart,
The Daily Telegraph.[
1]
The Herald was founded on
January 3,
1840, by
George Cavanaugh as
The Port Phillip Herald. In
1855 it became
The Melbourne Herald for all of one week before settling on
The Herald.
In its heyday,
The Herald had a circulation of almost 600,000, but by the time of its 150th
anniversary in 1990, with the impact of evening
television news and more people using cars as a means for transport rather than
trains or
trams,
The Herald's circulation had fallen to just under 200,000.
|
The old Herald and Weekly Times building in Flinders Street, Melbourne |
The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd was faced with the choice of either closing
The Herald which would have meant a massive lay off of employees or merging it with its morning sister paper
The Sun News-Pictorial and combining journalists and features from both papers in a new newspaper. The HWT decided to merge the two and so
The Herald was published for the last time as a separate newspaper on
October 5,
1990, after one hundred and fifty years, ten months and two days of publication. The next day,
October 6,
The Sun News-Pictorial published its last edition.
The Sun News-Pictorial was founded on
September 11,
1922, and was bought by the HWT in
1925.
The Herald Sun strengths are its clear writing style, relevance to its readership, extensive sports reporting and a general lack of pretension. Criticisms are often made, however, that its news and opinion content has no depth, is very sensationalistic and is comprised of a large proportion of 'soft' reporting. Left-wing critics say that it is biased to the right-wing, with some arguing that it reflects the view of one-time socialist, now conservative
Rupert Murdoch who is the chief executive officer of the Herald Sun's parent company.
Media critics have taken to nick-naming it
The Hun (e.g. ABC's MediaWatch, on the 1st May 2006[
2]).
Shortly before the
2004 election, the Herald Sun published an article entitled "Greens back illegal drugs" (Herald Sun, 31/8/2004) written by Gerard McManus which made a number of claims about the
Australian Greens. The Greens complained to the
Australian Press Council. The
text of their adjudication reads:
In the context of an approaching election, the potential damage was considerable. The actual electoral impact cannot be known but readers were seriously misled. [...] The claims made in the original article were seriously inaccurate and breached the Council's guiding principles of checking the accuracy of what is reported, taking prompt measures to counter the effects of harmfully inaccurate reporting, ensuring that the facts are not distorted, and being fair and balanced in reports on matters of public concern.The newspaper published what the Greens saw as an unenthusiastic
apologetic of the original article.
* Cameron Adams
*
John Anderson*
Andrew Bolt*
Terry McCrann* Gerard McManus
*
Neil Mitchell*
Mike Sheahan*
Jill Singer* Claire Sutherland
*
List of newspapers in Australia*
Rupert Murdoch*
News Corporation*
The Herald Sun website*
The Port Phillip Herald and The Herald archive 1840 - 1880*
Herald Living Apartments*
MediaWatch segment aired 1st May, 2006, ABC. "Age vs. Hun: Off-field Biff". Video accessed online 6th June, 2006.
2004 election controversy
*
Sydney Morning Herald opinion piece by Alan Ramsey*
Australian Press Council adjudication
